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The Friends'
postal address, telephone numbers and the email addresses of the
Secretary, the Treasurer and our Publicity Officer are all shown at
the foot of each page.

Contact
the hospital:

Friends of
Bristol Eye Hospital improve care and
treatment for patients by helping to pay for medical equipment,
patient comforts and staff resources which would not otherwise be
provided. Treatment for all patients has been greatly
enhanced by our supporters.

For every pound raised, we spend 92½p on this
support, 4p on governance costs and 3½p on
publicity.

Charity
Race Night

We hosted a great
evening at Churchill on 17 May 2019.

Many thanks to
all our sponsors and supporters for making it such a
success, especially:

plus all those
who named horses, attended on the night or worked hard to make it
such a success.

22 February 2019
last updated 20 May 2019

Friends' AGM
2019

The
Friends' AGM 2019 will be held in the

Board Room of the Bristol Eye
Hospital

on Tuesday 21 May
2019

at 6.15pm

BEH Clinical Director and
Consultant Ophthalmologist Abosede Cole will thank
the Friends for their work over the last year and
Consultant
Ophthalmologist CathyWilliams will
explain the benefits of two recent grants: the Forus Neo Portable
Retinal Camera and the Corneal Microscope (see below).

The Friends' Chairman
Richard Markham will review the work of the
Friends over the last year and our Trustees' Report and Accounts
will be presented for approval.

A copy of the draft Report and
Accounts for the year to 28 February 2018 is on our In Sight
page

Please note that the AGM will now
be held in the Board Room and not the Lecture
Theatre

16 May 2019,
amended 20 May 2019

ConfocalMicroscope

We are delighted to report that
we have made a grant of £45,349 to purchase and maintain a Confocal
Microscope. This advanced microscope is used to diagnose
microbial keratitis, of which acanthamoeba keratitis is one, and
other conditions affecting the cornea. These conditions are
devastating, painful and sight-threatening and can result in the
loss of the eye.

The microscope makes contact
with the patient’s eye (in the same way as a contact lens), so a
local anaesthetic is used, but the patient must be awake during the
examination. The patient sits in a chair as for a slit-lamp
examination and the doctor can see the layers of the cornea right
down to a cellular level.

Examination with this microscope
will be much more comfortable for the patient than the current
unpleasant invasive procedure of “scrapes” and will enable much
better diagnosis.

Patients will be referred from
all over the south-west of England & Wales for this
procedure.

22 March
2019

BEFORE

AFTER

New Bright and Cheerful Mural on
Level 3

Since January 2019, visitors to
Gloucester Ward have been welcomed by a large and colourful
mural - commissioned by the hospital’s management, designed and
painted by local artist Amy Hutchings and paid for by the
Friends.

Amy was asked to create a
colourful, vibrant and positive image illustrating Bristol Eye
Hospital as central to eye health in the city. It also had to
be robust and easily cleaned to conform to modern hospital
health and safety standards. Amy’s design includes
BEH in a skyline with green space, sky and water and
uses primary colours more visible to the partially sighted and
appealing to all ages.

Consultant Denize Atan commented
“Hospitals are designed and decorated to meet pragmatic
demands on space within a limited budget. Few hospitals
have budgets to make spaces appealing, yet studies have
shown that exposure to ‘greenness’ and natural environments may
improve surgical outcomes. So we are excited to work with Amy
to improve the hospital environment by decorating indoor spaces
with outdoor scenes.”

The Friends were delighted to
fund this project and we’re sure you’ll agree that it creates a
much brighter and welcoming environment.

A new edition
ofIn
Sight is now available in the Eye
Hospital. You can also view or download
a copy from our In Sight page. Copies will be distributed to
members and supporters shortly.

We apologise for the delay in
producing In
Sight. We have been without a
Publicity Officer for a year or so; but we are now delighted to
welcome Kevin Abbey in that role and thank him for
producing the new edition - our first since April 2017 - a
bumper issue of 12 pages. We hope you enjoy
it!

25 February 2019, updated 8
March

Ashcombe
Park Bowling Club's Charity of the Year for
2019

Captain Martin Paterson said
“As captain, I have the choice of which charity my club will
support throughout the year. Many of our members, including
myself, are currently undergoing or have received treatment at
Bristol Eye Hospital. Therefore, to show our gratitude for
all the treatment we have received, and after talking with
Professor Sparrow, it was an automatic choice to support
Friends of Bristol Eye Hospital”.

We have designed some new
banners for the Bowling Club, based in Weston-super-Mare, to
promote the Friends - in readiness for the new outdoor season which
starts in April. These will be available for us to use at
similar events in future.

In addition to promoting us at
their many social events and indoor activities, including short mat
bowls, the Club’s seven different teams play in various local
league games and host games against visiting teams from all over
the country. They also have a dedicated charity day where members
dress up to a theme for a fun day of bowls. So lots of
opportunities to raise funds for and to promote the
Friends.

The club offers six weeks of
free coaching for potential new members. If you are
interested in playing bowls or joining the Ashcombe Park Bowling
Club, there are full details on their website http://www.ashcombeparkbowlingclub.co.uk/

27 March
2019

Brenda Fearn at
the Friends' AGM in 2013

Brenda
Fearn

We are sad to report the death,
on 18 January 2019 at the age of 79, of Brenda Fearn, formerly
Sister in charge of Day-Case Cataract Surgery, Day-Case Children’s
Surgery and Pre-Op Assessment, whom we are sure many patients will
remember. Her career in nursing spanned 48 years of which the
last 15 were at Bristol Eye Hospital. In the early
nineties Brenda and her staff pioneered the practice of pre-op
assessment; Brenda also initiated hostel beds on King Ward for
day-case patients who lived alone - in those days, they were not
allowed home on the day of their operation.

Upon her retirement in 2001 she
became a trustee of Friends of Bristol Eye Hospital and served
enthusiastically without a break until ill health obliged her to
stand down in 2016. Her professional advice, compassion
and common sense were appreciated by her fellow trustees and she
was much loved and respected by all her colleagues.
Consultant Ophthalmologist Cathy Williams says “I have been
fond of Brenda ever since my first days as a very junior doctor
when she was Sister Fearn and ruled the roost on the wards!
She was unfailingly helpful, knowledgeable and
funny. She always put patients first and was a joy to
work with. I learnt a great deal from her and am one of the
many people who will miss her friendship.”

We have chosen
‘The Wonderful
Organisation’ to replace MyDonate.
This is live now. You can raise sponsorship, donate,
purchase event tickets or make any other payments to us using
a debit or credit card via our Wonderful page.

The
Friends’ trustees chose Wonderful as they charge absolutely nothing
to process payments. We and Wonderful believe that
all sponsorship raised by fund-raisers, all donations and all Gift
Aid should be paid to charities – without any
deductions. The Wonderful Organisation is a
non-profit organisation funded entirely by like-minded,
philanthropic businesses and makes no deductions from any donations
or Gift Aid. That's what makes them Wonderful!

We are notifying our supporters, who have used
or currently use MyDonate to raise funds or donate to us, that this
service will close on 30 June. Donations or payments to us
via MyDonate can still be made until that date (which, together
with any corresponding Gift Aid, may be transferred to us after
that). Donors are invited to switch to Wonderful
instead. Wonderful cannot currently accept regular
donations.

We thank MyDonate
for their excellent service provided at negligible cost over the
last six years.

15 February 2019, last
updated 8 May 2019

General Data
Protection Regulation (GDPR)

GDPR requires us to
protect personal data, inform supporters what data is
held for them, how it is used, and how it can be
viewed, amended or deleted. We have written to all
Members, supporters and volunteers setting out how we comply with
GDPR. Our updated Privacy Policy can be viewed on our
'In Sight' page.

If you have not heard from
us and wish to be contacted, or if you require any further
information about our stance on GDPR, please contact the
Secretary.